All in the cooking!

      Is there a cookbook you used in school for cookery classes? Do you still have it? Sadly I got rid of mine, it was a paperback and prone to falling apart, but I later found an early edition of it in a secondhand book shop and later again book 2.

      What I didn't realised was that it was a classic and has just been reprinted by O'Brien Press! 

      It is "All in the Cooking" written for Coláiste Mhuire  and approved by The City of Dublin Vocational Education Committee. It also became the cookery textbook for all Intermediate and Leaving cert students. Many of whom kept their copies and went on to use them in their homes.

      Hearing it was being reprinted I got out my copy and had a go at a couple of the recipes that I remember. We had a lot of plums at the time and one of the childhood desserts we I enjoyed was "Stewed Plums and Custard". 
      Partly for the fortune telling at the end when I counted up the stones.
I added a little spice to the plums and made the custard to the All in the Cooking Recipe.
It went down as well as I remember it.

          The second recipe I looked out was one for a 'cake' of Brown Soda Bread, 'cakes' of bread are round with a cross cut into the top of them and baked on a baking sheet. When broken into four quarters the individual quarters were known as a 'square' of bread in our house!

      These two brought back happy memories of watching in the kitchen as Delia, my Mum's wonderful kitchen help, made cakes of bread always pouring the last of the buttermilk onto her hand and smearing the top of the bread with it before cutting the three slashes to make the cross. Oh, happy days!